July 5, 2011

Still in Paris with Henry

Newman kept his promise, or his menace, of going often to the Rue de l’Université, and during the next weeks he saw Madame de Cintré more times than he could have numbered. He flattered himself that he was not in love, but his biographer may be supposed to know better. … What he felt was an intense, all-consuming tenderness, which had for its object an extraordinarily graceful and delicate, and at the same time impressive, woman who lived in a large gray house on the left bank of the Seine.

from The American, by Henry James

Oh, it's been a long time since I read Henry James (instead of about him), and I'd forgotten how much I love his writing. {This isn't an especially telling passage, just another one that I noted, more of a bookmark, and then I found the painting.}﻿

Are you reading something wonderful this week?

{Seventeenth Century Lady, by William Merritt Chase (1895),
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art}